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ACC Notebook: Duke among those still with chance to win Coastal

Matt Gentry The Roanoke (Va.) Times Duke coach David Cutcliffe, celebrating after a 13-10 win over Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., on Oct. 26, has the Blue Devils in the Coastal Division championship hunt.

It’s one crazy Coastal in the ACC.

Virginia Tech’s 42-24 victory over Miami last week threw the Coastal Division into even more disarray and with three weekends of football remaining in the regular season, six of the seven teams in the division remain mathematically in the race for the ACC championship and the right (or the burden) of playing Atlantic champion Florida State.

Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech, Miami and Duke all have two ACC losses. North Carolina, which was 1-5 overall just a few weeks ago, and Pittsburgh have three losses.

Before diving into the ACC’s tie-break scenarios, a lot of this might shake out this weekend.

■ A loss at Clemson on Thursday could knock Georgia Tech out of it. The Yellow Jackets hold head-to-head tie-breakers against Duke, North Carolina and Pittsburgh, but they lost to Virginia Tech and Miami.

■ The loser of the Duke-Miami game in Durham Saturday also will have three losses and will need some help.

■ The Hokies have the easiest remaining schedule. They play host to battered Maryland on Saturday and are at Virginia (0-6 in the Coastal) on Nov. 30. With a 6-2 record, Virginia Tech would not have the head-to-head tiebreaker against Duke or Miami but would against Georgia Tech.

■ To get a rematch with FSU in the ACC championship, Miami has to sweep Duke, Virginia and Pittsburgh and hope the only other two-loss team is Georgia Tech. The Hurricanes lost a tie-breaker advantage over Virginia Tech with last week’s defeat.

■ North Carolina is at Pittsburgh this week so one of those teams will be eliminated at four losses. But the winner still needs help … a lot of it.

The issue could go all the way to the final weekend, with Virginia Tech playing at Virginia, Duke at North Carolina and Miami at Pittsburgh.

There is the possibility of having three 6-2 teams (Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech and the Duke-Miami winner) and there’s also the possibility of a five-way tie at 5-3.

Donald finds home in Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh senior defensive tackle Aaron Donald has had perhaps the best season of any interior lineman in the ACC. He leads the nation in average tackles for loss per game (2.0), is tied for seventh in sacks per game (1.0) and of the top 10 players in sacks nationally, Donald is the only tackle. He’s a semifinalist for the Bednarik and Lombardi awards.

And Donald is the classic case of college coaches getting too fixated on size. He was 6 feet and 270 pounds coming out of the legendary program at Penn Hills, and recruiting coordinators shied away because they thought he was too short and too light.

As a result, Donald got offers from three schools: Akron, Toledo and the hometown team, the Panthers.

Demond Gibson, a former Penn Hills and Pittsburgh player who has been a mentor to Donald, told espn.com that the light interest shown in Donald “was a slap in the face.”

“I’m sure a lot of schools are kicking themselves for not having his kid on their team,” Gibson told the web site.

In a 21-10 loss to Georgia Tech on Nov. 2, Donald had 11 solo tackles (almost unheard of for an interior lineman), six tackles for losses, two forced fumbles and a sack. The six tackles for loss are a high in the FBS this season.

“He’s one of the best players we’ve played against,” said Tech coach Paul Johnson.

Arrests of would-be agents in N.C.

There have been two more arrests of would-be agents under North Carolina’s law forbidding them from offering inducements to college players in the state.

Willie James Barley Jr. and Michael Wayne Johnson Jr. are charged with helping an agent out of Georgia, Terry Watson, with offering former Tar Heel players Robert Quinn and Greg Little airline tickets, hotel rooms, rental cars and cash in 2010.

Watson and four others had already been charged by the North Carolina secretary of state’s office, according to the Associated Press.

Johnson was the starting quarterback at North Carolina Central at the time of his alleged crimes.

Quinn, Little and another Carolina player, Marvin Austin, were ruled ineligible for the rest of their college careers by the NCAA. Quinn is now with the St. Louis Rams and Austin was drafted in the second round by the New York Giants in 2011.

Etc.

Clemson QB Tajh Boyd has 93 touchdown passes, two behind the ACC career record of 95 held by Phillip Rivers of N.C. State. Boyd is likely to get the record within the next two games. Against Georgia Tech on Thursday, Boyd will face the league’s No. 8 pass defense, and next week, Clemson plays The Citadel. … Andre Williams of Boston College is chasing two ACC records held by Thomas Jones of Virginia. After rushing for 295 yards in a 48-34 victory over New Mexico State, Williams has 1,471 yards, already the seventh-best single-season total in ACC history and 327 yards behind Jones’ league record of 1,798 set in 1999. Williams needs to average 110 yards in the Eagles’ final three games against N.C. State, Maryland Syracuse to set the record. Jones also holds the league record with an average of 163.5 yards per game in 1999. Williams has 163.4.